by Matt Moore
Except Jacqueline hadn’t mentioned changing payments. Just to rent the house. Rent it, right now, to a couple named Bronwyn and Owen.
“And if that doesn’t work,” Connie went on, “and I hate to say it, but it might be time to think about selling. You have enough equity in the house that you’ll be okay for a while.”
“I’ll think about it,” Arthur replied, not knowing what else to say.
Connie took his right hand in her left and squeezed it, not seeming to mind its sheen of sweat. She said, “Why don’t you come by for dinner tonight?”
Arthur had no plans. He never had plans. But his older sister had never liked surprises. “Will that be okay with Laurel?”
Connie grinned. “I’ll make sure it’s ‘O,’ ‘K,’ and the other twenty-four letters with Laurel.”
They discussed when he should arrive and what he could bring, settling on six o’clock and a bottle of red wine. Arthur made a mental note to pick up a bottle of the Argentinean Malbec Jacqueline had been fond of. Connie went back to her car and Arthur drove away, but circled back to Ridgeline Crescent and, seeing Connie had gone, stopped in front of his house. Bored by condos in the Central Business District and row homes’ homogeneity, Jacqueline had fallen in love with the house’s ironwork railings, wide porch and the master bedroom’s gabled dormer windows. And some years from now, after the income from the renters she’d named had allowed him to pay off the mortgage, Arthur would move back in to be with her.
Unless, for the first time, she’d been wrong.
Or, more likely, he’d misunderstood what she wanted from him.
He tapped the steering wheel, telling himself he could face what was inside. Not just the memories.
He had to hear it again. Had to be certain.
He got out of the car and hurried around to the side door. Unlocking it, he swallowed and stepped inside.
The house seemed a parody of its former self. Even after three years, he didn’t realize he’d been expecting potpourri and the votive candles Jacqueline had loved. Instead, a faint citrus smell hung in the air. On the walls, neutral tones covered the bright and flamboyant colours Jacqueline had selected. The abstract black and white photos she’d hung, including some of his work under her tutelage, had been taken down. All traces of Jacqueline—the unbearable reminders of the hollow spaces her death had carved in his life—had been stripped away. Like he was an intruder in a stranger’s home. Like he didn’t belong.
He turned and climbed the back staircase, the steps’ familiar creak filling the silence, to the upstairs hall where a pine-scented air freshener replaced the citrus. All the doors stood open, except the master bedroom’s, sunlight spilling from the south-facing bedroom across the polished hardwood. He approached it and reached for the curved, brushed nickel handle, but paused. He hadn’t been in this room—the bedroom they’d shared, where she’d betrayed him, where she’d died—in three years. Empty now, except for some part of her that awaited his return. A return she’d foreseen happening years from now.
He grabbed the handle, turned it and pushed the door open.
Alone. Her voice. So perfect. So alive. She might have been standing beside the doorway.
Tears welled, cold creeping along his skin. “Yes, I’m alone.” He swallowed, not sure how to begin. “She—Bronwyn, I mean . . . I don’t think she’s taking the house.”
Echoing in the room’s emptiness: Bronwyn and Owen. Arthur, alone.
Arthur considered moving into the room. Instead, he remained at the threshold. “But there’s no Owen. Were you wrong? Should I do something different?”
Lynette and Francis. Bronwyn and Owen. Anna and Jorge.
“Jess, please! Tell me what you mean.”
Arthur, alone.
“What should I do?”
She remained silent.
A familiar lump settled in Arthur’s throat. The kind when he pushed too hard and provoked her icy silence.
He turned, went back down the stairs and out the side door. She’d said what she would say, repeating what she’d already told him. Even in death, she remained unwavering in her certainty.
He tried to take comfort from that, yet reaching the car his unease still clung to him like his shirt to his sweat-soaked back.
He parked in the narrow lot wedged between the apartment building and a beige low-rise office complex, the sky a narrow strip of blue five storeys up. During the ride from his house, he’d promised himself that he’d return to the apartment, grab his camera and spend the afternoon taking shots. Maybe shadows crossing the Gardener Building’s gothic façade. Or slow shutter-speed shots of tourist-filled squares, rendering people as blurry ghosts but the buildings sharp and eternal.
In the elevator, Arthur played Reggie’s voicemails. The first two asked for an update. The third told Arthur that someone else had expressed an interest in the partnership. If he didn’t hear from Arthur by the end of the week, Reggie would accept the other offer. Reggie finished by inviting Arthur to come by the studio, regardless of his decision. It had been too long since he’d seen him.
Arthur deleted the messages and went searching for his camera, not certain where he’d put it, fighting the momentum of his usual daily routine. He wouldn’t pass this day like every other—torturing himself with other photographers’ Flickr, Instagram, and Tumblr accounts. He had to do something to fill the empty hours between now and when he’d go to Connie and Laurel’s. When he’d been with Jacqueline, he’d rarely had idle time.
They’d met at the studio, her looking for help with some Nikon auto-everything that they didn’t sell. She was an attractive woman, so Arthur played along. She returned twice more to speak specifically with Arthur, which puzzled him until Reggie clued him in that she must like him and he should ask her out. When Arthur reminded Reggie of the policy of not dating customers, Reggie reminded Arthur that the woman had never actually purchased anything.
So the next time she came in he asked for her number. Smiling, she wrote it on the back of a business card and handed it to him, adding, “Took you long enough.”
She managed an art gallery in the Central Business District, so they talked photography and toured exhibits. He integrated into her circle of friends, meeting artists, gallery owners, and agents. She got him into the nouveau avant garde movement sweeping the city, saying his own work tended to veer into the pedestrian the more expressive he tried to be. Bookings and showings became so frequent he had to quit the studio to keep up. She took over organizing his shoots and showings, saying he didn’t have it in him to be his own boss.
Though his place was bigger, he moved into her Garden District condo. Sometimes, he returned from a shoot to find the short-sleeved, plaid collared shirts he liked gone from the closet. In their place hung Tommy Hilfiger polos. Or Diesel and Guess jeans occupying the drawer where his Levis had been. It was all part of the image he needed, she told him, if he wanted to succeed.
He proposed to her after two years and Jacqueline arranged her dream wedding.
At some point, a suspicion of infidelity had grown. Late nights at the gallery, always a given, grew more frequent. At parties or openings, she laughed at other men’s jokes and touched their arms or chests.
He wondered what he had done. If she wanted to vacation in London, they went to London. He let her pick the restaurants to eat at or which friends to meet up with after work.
It had been a Tuesday in June when a shoot in the Garden District ran an hour late. The ringtone for his home line chimed on his phone and he held his breath when he answered. Instead of Jacqueline asking where he was, a police officer told him there had been an accident and he needed to get home right away. Details would be lost in a blur of grief, but by the time Laurel drove him to her place for the night, he’d learned Jacqueline had tripped, fallen, and fatally struck her head. The police had informed him a man had been with her, but refused to release his identity. They had no evidence of foul play. Learning the man’s identity would only make the situation wo
rse.
Days and nights at Laurel and Connie’s flowed together. Laurel, always the big sister, dealt with the lawyers and funeral home’s paperwork, presenting him with things to sign. She hired people to clean up his house. Connie sat with him, listening as he alternated between blubbering and ranting.
The funeral came and went, memories of tears, hugs, and condolences blurry and vague, like an amateur photographer not knowing how to set a focal length.
Then Laurel, still the big sister, moved him back into his house, telling him he needed to get on with his life. Thankfully, Connie convinced Laurel that they should spend that night with him.
And so the first night in what had become his—not their—bed, Jacqueline’s voice roused him from a fitful sleep: Find my camera.
“Jacqueline?” he asked the darkness before turning on the bedside lamp, revealing the empty bedroom. Thinking it a dream, he rolled over, clutched the pillow and sobbed into it.
Her voice came again, repeating the message. He jumped out of bed, searching the closets and en suite bathroom before moving into the hall. Laurel found him in the living room and told him he’d been dreaming, which she repeated the next morning when Arthur told her he had heard Jacqueline twice more that night.
Connie was a bit more accepting, telling Arthur maybe Jacqueline had something to tell him. “Like apologize,” Laurel added.
Once they left, he searched for the camera. Laurel had probably been right. Or he was going crazy. In the haze of sleeplessness and fatigue, either was acceptable.
He eventually found the camera between Jacqueline’s dresser and the wall. A massive video file took up almost all of the memory. Transferring the file to his computer, he sat stunned as the video’s opening shot showed Jacqueline in their bed pulling the covers over her bare breasts. She gave the camera a familiar icy stare.
“Put that down,” she said.
“Come on, relax,” a man’s voice Arthur didn’t recognize replied. “I’ll take the vid card when I leave. Something to remember you by.”
“Bullshit you are.” Jacqueline threw back the covers, revealing she was naked, and defiantly got out of bed. She closed on him, reaching, but the image lurched back. The image stabilized on Jacqueline grabbing a pair of black lace panties from the floor.
“This was a mistake,” she said, pulling them on. The image lingered on her as she put on a black lacy bra Arthur hadn’t seen her wear in years.
“You still trying to make him jealous?” the man asked, keeping his distance. “Hoping he’ll finally man up? Jesus, Jess. He’ll never grow a spine. Either be honest with him or leave him.”
Grabbing her skirt from the floor, she said, “He’s got talent. Unlike you. He needs guidance. He’d fall apart without me.” She stepped into her skirt.
The camera moved closer, focused on her breasts. “But do you love him?”
In response, she reached out again. The image rolled, panning across the ceiling before returning to Jacqueline in mid-fall, skirt twisted around her ankles, arms extending in a vain attempt to halt what gravity demanded. It followed her fall. Her head made a soft, anticlimactic knock against the footboard, then she lay still on the floor. The man screamed profanity and the camera fell, landing on its side with Jacqueline’s head and shoulders visible in the lower part of the frame.
Arthur stopped the playback, biting back the urge to vomit, and staggered away from the computer. A sharp edge of rage pressed like a knifepoint against his breast bone, propelling him from room to room, cursing and screaming accusations until hoarse. Exhausted, he had collapsed on the couch and faded into sleep. At some point during the night, he had roused himself and climbed the stairs, head thrumming in a post-rage hangover. He found the bedroom door closed. Upon opening it, Jacqueline’s voice said: Watch the video. Listen.
He’d screamed and nearly backpedalled down the steps. Breath hitching, he approached the open, dark doorway. “Jess?”
Watch the video. Listen.
He burst into the room, equal parts wanting to embrace and throttle her. He flicked on the overhead light, finding the room as he had left it—bed unmade, clothing scattered. A condition Jacqueline would never have tolerated. “Where are you?!”
Her voice, from all sides of the bedroom, like he was within her: Watch the video. Listen.
Her calm authority soothed him. “What is this? Please, Jess.” He waited, emotions ebbing and flowing, until the realization dawned that either he had lost his mind or some part of Jacqueline had never left this room.
With sleep far off, he did as she told him. At his computer, he fast-forwarded through her death and then listened as the man tried to rouse her and finally called 911. Beneath this man’s pleas for an ambulance to come quick, Arthur heard Jacqueline mumbling.
He rewound to the beginning of the file and slid the volume selector to maximum. The sound of her skull striking the footboard shot bile up his throat. In the moment after, her eyes staring, Arthur heard Jacqueline’s voice: “Find my camera,” and, after enduring the man’s scream at full volume, “Watch the video. Listen.”
Rewinding and zooming in on Jacqueline’s face, Arthur saw her lips moving in time with the words. While her lover whined “ohmygod” somewhere out of frame, Jacqueline mumbled: “Rent the house.” As the video wore on, he could make out a few more words and phrases, but most were lost in the man’s frantic screams.
When the paramedics arrived, the camera was knocked into the corner, the unmoving image of the side of the dressed filling the computer screen. The paramedics exchanged questions and instructions offscreen while Jacqueline’s lover begged her to wake up. The clatter of what must have been a gurney. Then the voices retreated, fading, and silence from the video file.
Arthur put his head down, processing that he had watched his wife’s death. Fatigue stole in and he let it take him. But her voice said: “Find my camera.” He shot up. The screen still showed the side of the dresser, the timer continuing to run. “Watch the video,” Jacqueline said from the computer speakers. “Listen.” A few moments later: “Rent the house.”
Pairs of names followed, all of them the coming tenants. A few times, there would be a few words in addition to the names. Like “James and Mary, the baby” or “Colette and Henri, the fight.” The names ended with “Midori and Yoji” and her next words were “Arthur, alone.” After this came terms Arthur assumed would make sense once he had moved back into the house: “glass,” “northeast,” “bus driver,” “scar,” and ten others. After a few minutes of silence, she began again with “Find my camera.”
He stopped the file and moved into their bedroom. The sun had come up by then, golden light chasing dark shadows into corners.
She spoke him, her voice coming from everywhere: “Rent the house,” and listed the names and notes for the tenants to come, then the fourteen words and finished by repeating “Rent the house” over and over. He’d asked her questions, pleading, but she never wavered. Even as he left the room and shut the door, she continued to tell him what she needed him to hear.
He called Connie later that morning. By the end of the week, he was in the small apartment she’d found for him and arranged for movers to put the rest of their—his—things in storage.
Laurel used her older sister’s privilege to harass him to call some friends, get back to work and get on with life. But he could barely find the energy to get dressed most mornings.
Some of Jacqueline’s friends invited him out for dinner, but he declined. He suspected some of them knew Jacqueline had been cheating on him. Besides, he’d always felt they merely tolerated him as Jacqueline’s husband who sat quietly while Jacqueline held court.
It hadn’t taken long for the calls and texts to stop and, along with them, contract offers.
Fortunately, Reggie passed along editing and touch-up jobs Arthur could do at home. Between that and his dividend from the rent, he made ends meet. Still, there were lean times between tenants. In three years, two of the four
sets of tenants had moved out without warning. James and Mary had accused him of planting a speaker in the bedroom. Mary said a woman’s voice would wake her saying “the baby.” Connie denied this on Arthur’s behalf, but it didn’t stop James from doing several thousand dollars in damage punching holes in the walls looking for a speaker when Mary miscarried the child she hadn’t even known she’d been carrying. Lynette and Francis had left five months ago without any explanation.
Now he waited on Bronwyn and Owen.
He gave up on locating his camera. “Tomorrow,” he promised himself, sitting on his couch and grabbing his laptop.
He roused himself, not knowing when he’d fallen asleep, and showered.
He arrived at Laurel and Connie’s promptly at six. Laurel greeted him at the door wearing a red silk top, but shorts and bare feet. The comforting smell of jambalaya made his stomach grumble. Connie appeared from the kitchen, her suit replaced by a T-shirt and shorts. He passed over the wine, feeling awkward and foolish in his collared shirt and slacks.
After hugs of greeting they moved inside, Connie pouring him and herself a glass. Laurel mixed a four-olive martini and settled on the couch next to Connie, Arthur on the loveseat.
“So,” Laurel began, “how’s work?”
“Good,” Arthur replied, feeling the same way he had when his mother had asked about his grades. He sipped his wine to be polite. He’d never cared for malbec.
“What are you working on?”
“Nothing,” Arthur admitted. He hadn’t shared the news about Reggie’s offer, not wanting Laurel’s interference. She’d used her retirement savings to open a boutique grocery in the University District after quitting as the manager of a supermarket. “Not at the moment, anyway.”
Laurel leaned toward him and Arthur waited for another of her lectures.
Instead, she simply said: “We’re worried about you.”
Connie nodded and Laurel took her hand. Laurel continued, “Connie told me the showing today didn’t go well and it hit you hard. I’m scared you’re putting too much faith in renting the house and not enough in yourself. Our wedding photos are beautiful. And I’ve had friends who wanted to hire you, but I didn’t know if you were up to it. And maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I’ve been too hard on you.” She looked to Connie, who nodded reassurance.